Great Photography

Oh, and. . .

Thanks for stopping by the Gypsy Wagon! Leave me a note to let me know you were here, and to pass along any other creative folks you think I ought to visit. Please don't borrow my photographs or work without permission. All rights are reserved, and when they're violated, it makes me crabby and irritable. No one wants that.

January 20, 2013

It's a bad sign when one hasn't blogged in so long, that log-in becomes next to impossible. Multiple attempts, and multiple swear words resulted in a reset password and a new resolve to post more consistently.

I took a short break from Facebook last week - I think it lasted 3 days. Then intention was so good - I was very self-righteous about the amount of time that I was going to save doing things other than trolling my news feed. It worked for a couple of days until I remembered that if I was ever going to finish my Christmas, New Year's, Epiphany, Martin Luther King, Jr. cards, then I needed some addresses that were in messages on my Facebook page. I innocently reactivated, logged on, and promptly fell down the rabbit hole. There you have it - self-righteous paragon of time management to nosy information junkie in just three days. I spent a couple of days reactivating and inactivating my account for the five minutes that it took just get "caught up" and I realized that that anything short of a full-on intervention is probably futile.

So - I'm owning my shortcomings and promising myself that I don't have to get caught up in other folks' politics, religious convictions or lack thereof, or even misguided sports team alliances. I'm going to disregard the parts that make me crazy, and enjoy with gusto the parts that I like. Within reason.

January 05, 2012

Here's an almost-finished quilted wall hanging that I made this summer. When I made it, I was deep in the throes of homesteadiitis. That's my made up term for the disease that afflicts military wives from time to time. I had touches of homesteadiitis from time to time early in our marriage, but now that we are halfway through the 21st year of frequent uprooting and resettling, I can tell you that it becomes more intense as I get older.

This malady reached a fever pitch (as it periodically does) last summer, soon after we left Conner in Annapolis to begin Plebe Summer. I wallowed in the pity pit that so often swallows moms when their firstborn leaves for school, and then trudged through the valley of despair when I realized that Carey would be leaving for college the following summer, and THEN, just a few, short, (Four Years!) later, Cullen would leave for college too.

My question became "Where is HOME? Where will the kids come back to visit? Where do they feel is the place that is their touchstone, their anchor, their starting point?" (I'm nothing if not melodramatic in a crisis). Once I identified this potential family breakdown and subsequent scattering throughout the country never to be together again, I obsessed focused on the lack of a true home base - incessantly.

My concerns were not without reason as we have moved almost 20 times in our life together, and our children have moved to a new home, school, state about every two years. When they are asked where they are from, they look confused and answer with something that sounds like, "well I was born in Washington State (or South Carolina, or Virginia), but I'm FROM all over".

All my worries and obsessions aside, there's a lesson to be learned from the mouths of babes. We have been planted a lot of different places in our military journey - from one coast to another, and up and down the East Coast several times over. But. And here's the important piece. Home isn't a place. It isn't a building, a town, or even a state. Home is a place that we create - and it goes with us wherever we go.

More than once, I've watched the big semi truck pulling the extra larger tractor trailer pull away from the curb as we prepare to move from one duty station to the next, and I've realized that everything - EVERYTHING that matters to me is what's who's left behind. Should anything happen to that big moving box full of everything that we've accumulated over our years together, it would be a bummer. But's that it. Because what travels with us is what makes us home.

My definition of home has changed - it can't be pinpointed on a map, but it can be found anywhere.

January 02, 2012

In further tackling the Christmas un-decorating (which I enjoy as much as I do reverse sewing), I remembered the brilliant solution that I came up with last year as an alternative to the $20 ornament storage boxes that you can get at the Walmart. I'd love the beautiful individually compartmentalized Christmas storage boxes that are archival and non-acidic and nuclear-bomb-proof that places like The Container Store sell, but I'm cheap. And I have a boat-load [technical Navy term] of ornaments and otherwise critical Christmas paraphernelia. I also have a lot of wine case boxes. What can I say? We like good red wine and John has a propensity to ignore the pile-up of cardboard in the garage. Some might call it a fire hazard, but who am I to judge? Anyway - in a fit of wine case surplus brilliance, I realized that the cardboard bottle separator inserts would be great for ornament storage. Pulled those suckers out of the wine cases, fitted them into my four score and seven Rubbermaid rough tote Christmas storage (totally elegant, I know), and viola! I was in business.

I wrapped those silly schwetty Christmas balls in tissue paper, lovingly tucked them into their wine bottle columns and patted myself on the back. Safe for another year -and perhaps another Navy move.

In an attempt to procrastinate the Christmas un-decorating for a little bit longer, I thought I'd update The Gypsy Wagon with some photos of the Christmas decor here in our SE Georgia casa. We decorated five trees this year which is neither the most nor the least trees that we've decorated in the past. We ran out of time before we ran out of decorations which says something about our lack of moderation.

This tree resided in the corner of the room that we lovingly call "the hamster cage" because the kids think that the sisal rug smells like the (fresh) wood shavings that line hamster cages. The Tex-Mex fiesta tree isn't a new addition to the family forest, but it's shown up in various iterations throughout the years. One year all of the decorations were affixed to a heavy lighted garland in the kitchen. Another year, it was a short squatty tree in yet another kitchen. This year I sprang for a new narrow pre-lighted tree at Joann Fabrics. It came with a sprinkling of multi-color lights and I added another string of larger multicolor lights to add more depth and gaudiness. The ornaments on this tree have been collected over the years and Our Lady of Guadalupe is one of my favorites and is always carefully wired to ensure that it will survive another year in the O'Neill household. I collect things all year long to add to this tree, and this year brought back several tin ornaments from El Tesoro in Austin. As John said, "nothing says Christmas like a skeleton sailor made of tin".

Most years we have a full size faux tree with all of the food ornaments tucked in a corner of the dining room. This year, the furniture arrangement wouldn't allow that- and that particular tree is ready for disposal so we went another route. Dead branches from the live oak tree became the food tree this year, and while it was a little unconventional I loved it.

Yes, I know that there's too much grain in that photo, but I'm having camera issues with two different Nikons right now, and the IPhone is the camera that works right now. The Chinese take-out box was the new addition this year to the food tree. And you can see the taco above and too the left of the take-out box. Doesn't everyone have a blown glass taco Christmas ornament?

The Army/Navy tree was placed out in the screen-in porch for the Army/Navy party and it stayed there throughout the season. The silver tinsel tree came from a serendipitous shopping expedition in Teena Flanner's attic before she moved away from Norfolk. Joann and I spent an hour and a half digging through all of her ornaments, paper-mache snowmen, Santas and angels. The tree was one that she had used for display in her shop. I love getting it out every year and remembering how much fun Joann and I had sitting in the doorway of her attic laughing and shopping.

One of my favorite Navy ornaments is the one that Lara made for me in 2001 when we were stationed at the Naval Academy the first time. All those french knots are love manifested in embroidery floss.

The first of two real trees this year was the Texas tree out on the porch. We had hosted a Texas barbecue several weeks prior and left the bunting, the Texas flag and the party decor up through Christmas. Since there were so many decorations already up, it made sense to put the Texas tree up near all of the existing Texana. I had only one photo of that tree and it was a night shot so the quality isn't great. However, it had all of our Texas ornaments on it, silk bluebonnets and Indian paintbrush flowers spotted throughout. Conner's old lariat made a great garland, and the battered wooden Texas flag sign stood in as the tree topper. Burlap and bandana circled the base as a tree skirt and old boots and antlers represented presents.

Finally: the fifth tree. This was the tree in the living room and the one that received the most attention in the decorating process. We decided to go with a loose (very) coastal Georgia Christmas theme. A friend contributed cotton on the stalk from south-central Georgia and that was added to the tree along with faux metallic pheasant feathers, shells and sea stars, along with ornaments in gold, silver, blue and citrus green. More than 1,000 lights made this tree sparkle and the floral picks in silver and gold added to the shine.

The photo quality has me resolving to do better in 2012 - both in quantity and quality! Either I've got to learn to clean my Nikon DSLR sensor, or I've got to bite the bullet and send it off.

In any event - there's Christmas 2011 in a nutshell. I don't think we'll be in Georgia for Christmas next year, so I want to document our time here for this season.

February 13, 2010

I went back to work yesterday. We were one of the few schools open yesterday - due in part to the multitudes of eager parents who helped dig out on Thursday so we could open yesterday. I guess too many successive days home with elementary aged kids tends to make parents a little stir crazy.
It was time for me to go back. I couldn't take anymore of the constant movies, books, bloody mary, wine, cheese and crackers, the baking, the eating, the relaxing - ye gods, the relaxing! It's not that I didn't enjoy it. Oh, I enjoyed it. But it could so easily become a lifestyle. Shopping? Yeah I can do that right here on the laptop. Exercise? I'll just watch some sports on the tube. Make-up and hair? Naah. I'll just hang out here in my cozy pants and not answer the door. Kids, hand me my cell phone so I can call upstairs to ask your dad to bring me another cookie.
Yeah. It was time.
Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go find my running shoes.

September 26, 2009

In honor of the class of 1949 - here for their 60th reunion. I love seeing the alums returning for their reunions - eyes misty at the playing of Blue and Gold, the enthusiastic embraces of friends long unseen.

August 30, 2009

And here it is - the beginning of the end of summer. Soccer and football started at a challenging 7 am today, and I've already filled the calendar with upcoming scrimmages, practices, team meetings, etc. School hasn't even started yet, and we're steaming up to a breakneck pace.

I'm lamenting the end of summer. It's not as though we didn't take advantage of it.

We watched lots of lacrosse.

And we visited Princeton when we were in the area for a lacrosse tournament.

The kids swam for summer swim team, but I have no pictures of that.

John and I took an overnight to DC.

We got to spend all the time we wanted in the National Gallery. In fact when one day wasn't enough, we went back for a second. We ate at Hook in Georgetown, which is incredibly inventive in its food pairings. (My favorite was the beet, goat cheese, pistachio salad. Sounds sketchy, but is making my mouth water just thinking about it!) The only downside of the experience was the tough lesson in practicality that I had to learn the hard way: You can't wear cute sandals for two days of downtown DC walking. Or, rather, you can but you'll have blisters that can be seen on Google Earth that subsequently require doctor's attention. Said doctor told me that I needed to lose the cute shoes. Hmph. Not bloody likely!

We then packed up the car with the kids, the dog and lots of sunscreen and headed to Florida for a week at Captiva Island. The laptop went with me, and I worked on schoolwork all the way down and back, but put it completely away while on vacation. It only took a day or two for me to exhale and actually relax.

Captiva is magical.

The water was sparkling tourquoise, and clear enough to see the shells on the bottom. Having grown up on the Gulf of Mexico, it was hard to believe that this was the same Gulf I'd played in in South Texas.

And it truly was fabulous. Marathon scrabble games, margaritas and guacamole on the beach, and hours and hours of time to just be ---- I won't forget that for a while.

Of course, I drafted this post on August 15th, and here it is August 30, and I can hardly remember my train of thought.

We've had a full week of school for all of us. Conner has already potentially torn ligaments in his shoulder, Carey's in full-on soccer practice, Cullen loves middle school and there you have it. Breakneck speed again.

My goal is to be better about blogging. I think about it a lot, but can't seem to telepathically communicate with my computer. Maybe I've just not tried hard enough. . .

April 12, 2009

Two years ago we were lucky enough to go to Charleston for Easter and we were lucky enough to get to do it again this year. When we came two years ago, we were looking for warmth and sun and an unusually cold Easter awaited us. We spent our visit adding layers to our spring clothes and huddling against the wind. This year, we were much more fortunate and the weather was gorgeous. Although it was a little cool, we were able to go to the beach. Some of us even ended up with sunburns!

The sky was a achingly beautiful Carolina blue and people were in high spirits with the onset of spring. Flowers were blooming and the air smelled fresh and clean.

We spent lots of time walking downtown - partly to enjoy the sights and sounds, partly, too, to counteract the food that Charleston's known for.

Several places were so good that we ate there twice - Hyman's and Jestine's each saw us twice during our short stay.

The Master's was going on this weekend and during our downtown treks, there were plenty of reminders:

Reminders of Easter were everywhere, and in this Holy City, the tributes were beautiful.

The Easter service at the church we attended when we lived here was glorious - full of little girls wearing smocked dresses and patent leather Mary Janes, and little boys (and big boys) in that oh-so- Southern blue seersucker suit. Bowties and big hats also reminded us that we were in the South where Sunday Best has a meaning all its own.

We took a drive up the coast and saw small towns where shrimping is still the name of the game.

And then it was on to Pawley's Island where John spent so many summer weeks during his childhood.

We took a last trek to the downtown waterfront in Charleston for a couple of last minute photo ops, then shrimp and grits (yum!) for dinner. It's time to pack up and head home, but it's only a matter of time before we return!

March 16, 2009

November came and went with a quiet Thanksgiving. December blew through like it was rocket-fueled. Christmas parties, and pageants, cookies and decorating, cards and gifts were all a blur as the month came to a close. Photographs were taken to mark some of the events, while others were recorded only as memories. 2009 crept in quietly as I continued schoolwork and prepared to start my new job teaching ten fourth grader. Once school started, time took on a quality that I didn't know it had - and warp speed became more than a concept to me. It became reality. February brought the annual Fab February Five birthday weekend, and then it was March. Now it's Spring Break and I'm just barely coming up for air. Holy cow - what a wild ride!

I've loved all of the new components of my life - my schoolwork and my classroom, but I struggle daily to find a measure of balance and a little piece of quiet.

We operate at such a crazy pace, that I feel as though I never really PREPARE for the next thing, I just grab what I need and GO. Whether the "next thing" is dinner, a lacrosse game, a field trip or houseguests, very little thoughtful preparation is happening these days. I have lesson plans prepared, and that's just about it. I know that this first year in the classroom has demands that are incrementally larger than subsequent years will be, so I find myself hanging on to the safety bar as the roller coaster prepares to rush down the track.

Last week's fluke snow day gave me an unexpected day off - and rather than playing catch-up on all of the housework and laundry, I grabbed the camera and went out to catch the day. I'd like to have visual documentation to augment my memories.